1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of computer aided drafting. More particularly, it relates to a method to capture and interchange schematic drawing and design information.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Schematic drawings include mechanical, electrical, and fluid system drawings that have information related to the connection and interaction of components in the drawing. Current computer aided drafting methods provide either the data and engineering aspects of the components or the viewing and drawing aspects of the components, but not both. Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) methods have been developed to combine the two, but these CAD/CAM methods have used proprietary or specialized tools or languages to format or access the data. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,223,094, for a Multi-Tiered Structure For Storing And Displaying Product And Process Variants, to P. Muehleck et al., uses a special language called EXPRESS.
There is a need in the art of Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) for a method to provide a file that contains design information combined with schematic drawing information. The ability to provide both together is an important capability in schematic drawings which allows for interactive manipulation of schematic components.
The invention is a method to capture schematic drawing and associated design information by means of a digital computer. The method comprises the following steps:                a) taking schematic drawing and design information from a drawing model and providing it to the computer;        b) translating the schematic drawing and design information into a form amenable to drawing interchange;        c) converting the translated schematic drawing and design information into a platform-independent format that is extensible; and producing a schematic platform-independent data file;        d) validating that the schematic platform-independent data file meets the requirements of a format specification;        e) parsing the schematic platform-independent data file to construct a generic data structure;        f) validating the schematic platform-independent data file by validating the design information in the generic data structure;        g) storing the validated schematic platform-independent data file in a computer-accessible medium; and        h) retrieving the validated schematic platform-independent data fife for use in post processing analysis, modeling or reproduction.        
The invention is a schematic drawing and design data interchange method. The method uses an available computer language rather than a specialized language. The method makes schematic drawing and design information available in a universally accessible form. The invention reduces schematic drawing development time and facilitates drawing distribution because of the use of a platform-independent schematic drawing markup language (SDML) file.